


On Being Tame

by MercuryGray



Series: The Royal Tigress [2]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Hate Sex, Original Character(s), Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:52:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even a caged lion can admire things he cannot have. Simcoe, court-martialed and in exile in Philadelphia, is still smarting from Anna’s rejections, and admiring something with a different taste entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Being Tame

**Author's Note:**

> As I was watching season 2 of TURN, there was a very strange five minute interval -- the scene in which he is being bullied for his poetry at the Quartermaster's offices -- where I was actually sorry for Simcoe. And in that five minute interval, all kinds of strange gears started turning in my head -- which lead, of course, to this PWP travesty.
> 
> (Lady Lavinia Montrose made her debut in my Sons of Liberty fanfic Noli Me Tangere. Short version: she is a lady of property with an old and inattentive husband, a hidden agenda, and a strong taste in very difficult men.)

 

If this was hell, Simcoe was sure he didn’t want anything to do with it any longer.

 

He had been, for the last several hours, bossed and marched and shouted all over the general Headquarters in Philadelphia, shunted from one office to the next until someone, somewhere, found a place for him. Today’s most recent destination had been the Quartermaster’s offices, where the commanding officer -- a ruddy cheeked boy of twenty -- was too busy to receive him with anything but half-hearted interest, and barely looked at Simcoe’s orders before gathering up his things and exiting the office. “Well, aren’t you coming?” he asked peevishly, leaving Simcoe to follow in his wake while he prattled about the duty of the supply line.

 

They made a stop at the market, inspecting produce, and then the city tanneries for a look at shoe leather, winding their way back by way of the common, heavy today with sheep and the traffic of market day.

 

Simcoe’s eye was casting around for something, anything, to relieve the unmitigated boredom offered by what looked like what was going to be a long lifetime spent shuffling cabbages around a balance sheet when a flurry of activity at the corner of the common drew his eye -- a group of women, well-dressed, on their way out for a ride.

 

“Now, there’s a fine set of fillies,” his officer observed, his own attention captured by the parade of female beauty. “Wouldn’t mind getting one of them onto my saddle. The blond one, there -- that’s Peggy Shippen. Richest girl in Philadelphia -- and the prettiest, too. Spoke to me once, you know,” he boasted, awash in private glory. Simcoe resisted the urge to roll his eyes and studied the rest of them. Miss Shippen was remarkable, a  veritable china doll of a woman-- but there was another lady, with what looked to be auburn hair tucked cleverly under her hat, who seemed all the finer for being on a horse. A gust of wind blew up, and for a moment, the ladies’ long divided skirts went wild, revealing a fine assembly of hessian boots that made the Quartermaster whistle in appreciation. Hearing it, the flame-haired lady turned her horse, her eyes hot with disdain. His companion smiled, and received a sneer for his efforts.

 

“And the lady in green?” Simcoe asked, secretly applauding.

 

HIs companion looked at him with surprise, still smarting from her public disaffection. "You like to play dangerously, Captain -- that is Lady Lavinia Montrose. Wife of Sir James Montrose -- the Scottish banker, you know."

 

"The lady is married?" Simcoe asked, wondering what on earth that could possibly have to do with her being dangerous. Married women had liaisons all the time in this accursed country -- wasn’t Sir William Clinton at this very moment parading his mistress Mrs. Loring around Philadelphia?

 

"Only just. Best put her out of your head -- she plays for higher stakes than you and I can bet. Rumor puts her in the bed of half the members of Parliament -- and the recent Governor General of Massachusetts. Sir Thomas Gage.”

 

“That hardly makes a lady dangerous,” Simcoe replied. His companion shook his head.

 

"Put delicately, sir, if women were allowed into the Hellfire Club, Lady Lavinia would be a charter member. You’d have to be made of pretty stern stuff to tempt her.”

 

Simcoe nodded, watching the band of mounted women ride off, skirts fluttering in the breeze. _Better stuff than a captain’s pay, too, I shouldn’t think._  Mistresses were for generals and men of property -- not the likes of him.

 

And he was rather off women for the present, anyway.

 

There were few temptations available to an officer recently arrived in Philadelphia. Not so rich in whores as New York, nor yet so many dens for any kind of vice -- save drinking. Whiskey, at least, seemed to be in great supply, supplied by local farmers and made from local corn, a raging rotgut that would knock any man insensible enough to drink it more insensible still. Which was exactly what Simcoe wanted on this particular evening -- he wanted to drink until he could not remember a thing -- not the name of this godforsaken town, or the face of the smallish, sneering boy to whom he was now to report, or the forms he would have to fill tomorrow until his hands were black and cramped.

 

If he could forget a certain lady in Setauket, too, well, then, so much the better.

 

A man could do a lot of damage on cheap whiskey, it seemed. He drank at one tavern until they would sell him no more, then wandered, unstable, to a second, and a third, neither knowing nor caring what people said in his wake. This was the army -- it was full of unhappy men.

 

And unhappy men deep in their cups do not a pretty picture make.

 

At the third tavern there was some general laughter, and a joke he did not like, and a spilled drink, and a punch thrown, and a man with more sober friends holding him down bodily while they laid into him and then tossed him out into the street, wig a mess, coat ripped and wrapped in the effluvia of at least one taproom floor. The stone of the pavement was cool beneath his cheek, and he was so winded he very nearly fell asleep, listening, in his whiskey-soaked daze, to the passing voices and the clip of hooves on stone. It was just when he heard a shout and the squealing of a team of horses drawn up to stop too quickly that he finally decided sleep might not be such a bad idea.

 

_Hachell, what is it?_

_Only a drunk officer, lady. I’ll just get down to move him._

_Wait. Put him inside._

_Inside, Lady? He stinks of...the street._

_Inside, Hachell. And then home._

 

If Simcoe’s mind had been in a fit state to remember anything, he might have called up (from his brief periods of wakefulness) the image of being lifted from the street by the carriage driver (and the man’s sound of unhidden disgust) and bodily shoved into the floor of the waiting carriage, jolting and jogging over the cobblestones to a very fine looking townhouse and being lifted, un-gently, from the carriage and carried inside under a liberal blanket of swears and curses from the coachman and the butler.  Then a long, long drink of salt water, forced down his throat at the midden heap, his nose pinched shut to make him drink it all, and the short, painful process of bringing up a whole night’s worth of bad decisions and worse liquor.

 

He was washed, re-clothed, and then put to bed -- which was where he found himself several hours later, waking up in an unfamiliar room, the tapers half-burnt out.

 

His head was still ringing and a little foggy -- but he knew enough to deduce that this was not his barracks, and the woman in the corner of the room was decidedly not his orderly sergeant.

 

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” she observed, setting aside her book. “I was afraid I was going to have to explain to Sir William how I came to have one of his captains dead in my guest bedroom.”

 

Simcoe looked around, examining the room -- white wax tapers in the sconces, only half-burned (The house had put out new candles for the mistress to read by) linen sheets (fine quality, none of your country-wove homespun here) and a well-turned bedstead (mahogany, perhaps? A very fine-grained wood.)  Seeing no answers to any of his many questions in the room itself, he turned his attention to the woman, sitting in state in the corner. A tumble of flame-colored hair fell over one shoulder, and even without the figure cut by her green riding habit Simcoe didn’t need to think twice to place her. Lavinia Montrose -- she of the expensive tastes and the Hellfire Club.

 

“It would appear I am in your debt, madam,” he observed, watching for her reaction.

 

“Rather more my coachman’s debt, I’m afraid,” she replied easily. “He could very easily have let the horses run over you -- but blood is so difficult to get out of leather. And I couldn’t very well leave you lying in the street -- wouldn’t help the king’s service at all, to have officers drunk and disorderly at all hours.  And, not knowing your regiment, I simply brought you home. It seemed less trouble.”

 

_Less trouble? For whom?_

 

“I must say, Captain, you are far and away the most interesting guest I’ve ever had in that bed,” she continued, obviously amused. “Most of my guests don’t talk in their sleep.” Simcoe tried not to look mortified. _What did I say?_ he wondered desperately.  “It was very hard to make out, but I rather thought you were arguing with someone -- a woman, perhaps?” She watched him. “Or was it a superior officer? There were some very choice epithets involved at one point.”

 

 _Does she mock me?_ “You have been very kind, Lady Lavinia, but I think I should leave --”

 

“And go back to barracks at this time of night? What will your superior officers think? No -- stay out. It’ll make them wonder. Besides,” she pointed out. “You seem to know my name, but I have not been given the honor of knowing yours.”

 

“Captain John Graves Simcoe, at your service, madam.” He was fully aware of the oddness of it, greeting a lady, a titled lady, with his full name and saying that he was _at her service_ when she was clearly at his, having saved him from a night in the streets and a headache far worse than the one he was feeling now.

 

She inclined her head graciously. “Thank you, Captain. That wasn’t so hard, was it? You are...recently arrived in Philadelphia, I take it?” He did not respond, still seething, a fact she did not seem to notice. “I rather thought so -- no officer goes to Catchpurse Lane to drink himself insensible. It’s full of Rebels -- you’d do better in Diamond Street. And the liquor isn’t quite so hard there. Unless...you went out looking for a whipping.” Her eyes studied his with matchless intensity, daring him to answer. “It’s not hard to guess your story,” she went on, ticking off points on her fingers. “Recent arrival, dead drunk, argues in his sleep, looking to get hurt-- I’m sure there’s a woman in there somewhere who didn’t make you very happy, Captain.”

 

How dare she? How dare she sit there, in all her state, dressed in what was clearly a man’s banyan robe, and mock his troubles? "Where are my clothes?" He asked pointedly, avoiding any of the obvious questions and cutting straight to the point, rising to his full (and not inconsiderable) height to stress the point that he wished now to leave -- by violence, if necessary. She rose from her chair, and he was surprised to see that, she, too, was a woman of some height (though not as tall as Simcoe; but then, they did not make women quite as tall as him.)

 

“My butler has taken the liberty of washing them. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, filthy." She smiled as though the idea were distasteful. "Oh  -- he did manage to save these from an inside pocket." She held up a small sheaf of folded papers --his notes for his most recent poem. Simcoe's heart leapt up in anger. "Did you write them?" she asked innocently, opening the little quarto to peruse it. "A little pedestrian, perhaps, but serviceable. Though I cannot see what you find in this Anna --"

 

It was enough for Simcoe. In two quick strides he had crossed the room and pinned her to the wall, ready (so ready!) to crush her, tear her, anything to make her submit and wipe that satisfied, smug look off her face. But she was still smiling, quivering against the wall. "Drop them," he growled. She did not comply, keeping his gaze with hard, clear eyes, the hand that held his notes raised high, the other pinned between his body and hers.

 

"Or what? I've had worse than the likes of you, Captain Simcoe. Besides, it might do you good." The hand between them dropped between his legs and took hold, and it took all of his will not to respond by pulling away. Her smile crooked mischievously. "Someone's got a pocketful of silver needs spending," she observed, her grip firm and observant. "And since your lady won't oblige you..."

 

Simcoe took a deep breath through his nose, teeth still bared, and tried to manage the tide of animal feeling rising against (and in real danger of overwhelming) an already high tide of anger. "What do you want from me?" He asked sharply, his face inches from her own.

 

"Whatever do you mean?" she asked, playing the innocent.

 

"You like men with power," he accused, his grip tightening on her arm. "I have none. Why help me?"

 

"I hate to see a fine specimen of manhood in disgrace," she said kittenishly, daring him to disagree. "And sometimes a lady needs a...blunt instrument in a dark alley." Her own grip on his person moved with no little skill, and it was all he could do not to move towards her, the blunt instrument of which she and her hand spoke implying objects of two completely different uses. His body was responding of its own accord, seven months of unspent passion singing in his veins and reminding him that she was here and under his power and it would be so easy...

 

"I can get what you're selling in any corner tavern," he scoffed, still trying to master his instincts. "Cheaper, too."

 

"I'll send you home tomorrow in my private coach," she said. "They'll see you arrive in it -- it's very well known. And they'll wonder what you did to catch my eye, to win my favor. And they'll be pleasant and delightful while they try to guess your secret. The men you hate,” she added, seeing a fleeting glimpse of confusion cross his face. “You did more than argue with your Anna in your sleep.” Damn the woman. She had him by the hip -- and worse. “And then you'll have what they don't -- prestige. You’ll have an invitation to every drawing room and dance in Philadelphia. That's what I can give you." Her fingers rolled again. "And your corner tavern tricks besides."

 

Her hands opened, the pages fell, and for a moment, neither of them moved, Simcoe's breathing labored, his whole body stretched tight as the head of a drum. She watched him, and, seeing him paralyzed, smiled broadly.

 

That did it. Baser instincts won. In half a moment his whole body was pressed the length of hers, his lips consuming and cruel, not caring whether he hurt her or not. His hand finally let her arm go, and no sooner had he let it drop then she was drawing his shirt up, her fingers hot against the edges of his hips and clever, so clever, against the fall of his breeches. It was a moment's work to lift her up and let her legs wrap up around him, and then seven months of unspent silver were suddenly and wantonly being spent. Her fingers were on his neck, and in his hair, and her lips were against his ear, murmuring and sighing in delight, encouraging him.

 

It was not kind, this lovemaking -- his anger colored all, his thoughts a kind of scarlet haze. The wall behind them shook and shuddered with every thrust. When he had finished he was breathing hard, a trickle of sweat chasing past his eye.

 

He let her down inelegantly, her chemise creased in heavy folds around her hips. He would not let his eyes meet hers, still angry that she'd lead him so, ashamed that base nature had won out. "Feeling better?" she asked, her own voice ragged with disuse. Was there a little accusation in her tone?

 

"No." His own voice had a jagged edge in it.

 

A thoughtful pause. "Would you have been kinder, if I were her?"

 

The question slid in between his ribs like a knife, and he felt his shoulders collapse a little, undone.  _The truth, now, or she’ll call you out._  "I don't know."

 

She made some small sound of acknowledgement, and adjusted the banyan around her shoulders. "Ring the bell if you want anything," she said, and he heard the lock click and the door swing open.

 

"Wait." Was that desperation he heard in his own voice? Because there was something desperate, pawing at the back-doors of his mind, something that wished for softer things than this, for the feel of her hands in his hair, and not clawing at his throat.

 

She stopped, paused in the doorway, and looked back over her shoulder. "Don't apologize," she said, her voice all cold steel and sharp edges, the grasping, desperate lover of a moment earlier gone, replaced again by the woman of business. "It wouldn't suit."

 

Simcoe watched her go, saw the door slip in behind her, and then eyed the bed with little-hidden remorse. His whole body felt relieved, somewhat, of the burden it had suffered under all these months, but there was something else, now, in his heart, a dull ache that threatened to remain.

 

 _Is this what I am?_ he wondered. _Is this all I can be? A half-tamed beast? Can there be nothing soft and warm for men like me?_

 

He crawled between the covers and fell asleep feeling more wretched and alone then he had earlier that evening in the street.

 

In the morning, his coat was hanging, pristine and pressed, on a hook on the wall, his boots polished and his hat freshly blocked. A fresh wig, powder still white, stood on a stand, waiting for its new owner’s head. Of the drunken mess he had been last night there was no sign -- The Lady’s servants did their business well, it seemed. And all of it for a man who had treated her like the lowest Holy Ground whore.

 

He dressed without help (unobtrusively offered by the butler, who withdrew, bowing, after Simcoe dismissed him) and made his way down the hall, surveying the other rooms of the townhouse with interest. Decorated in a modern style and in excellent (and expensive) taste. Where had these chairs come from? These hangings? (Was one of her lovers a privateer, perhaps? There seemed little other option to explain this house.) The last door in the corridor was closed, and he could hear, within, the sound of water being poured -- the lady at her bath. He paused, considering, and knocked twice. The water stopped.

 

“Come in.”

 

He tried the handle, finding it unlocked, and let himself inside. The room behind the door revealed itself as her boudoir, at present almost overwhelmed with a bathing tub, which a maid had been filling with water while her mistress observed from her dressing table.

 

“You can leave, Lucy. I think it’s quite full enough for now.”

 

The maid bobbed her curtsey to her mistress and left, carefully shutting the door behind her as she went. The lady of the house surveyed him from her seat like a queen, arranging her shawl. “Travers can call the carriage for you,” she said blandly, as if she were wondering why he would bother her with a silly bit of buisness like that. “You hardly need my permission to leave.”  But that wasn’t why he had come here. Why could he not speak? “Well?”

 

Anna had been gentle and sweet, but iron and steel beneath, and he wanted that, all of that, a woman who could take him as he was, the monster with the man. He had no use for weak-kneed women, and Lavinia was certainly not that -- had she not taken what he had dealt her without complaint? Taken it, yes, and dared him do worse afterwards. _You have something I want, and I do not know how to ask for it._ “I wondered...if we might not start again,” Simcoe found himself saying. “A lady should not be treated thusly.”

 

“And yet here we are,” she replied, watching him with careful eyes. He saw, now, that she looked tired, the shawl loose and inelegant on her shoulders. The chemise that she was wearing to bathe was thin as fog, and he could just make out lines of red, raked out along the tops of her thighs. Her hair, loosely knotted back, was curling in the humidity of the bath, and he could see, on her neck, another angry red mark. This was not the Amazon of last night, resplendent in her armor and terrifying to behold -- this was the woman underneath, vulnerable as Eve. And he wanted, suddenly, to hold her and pet her and read her poetry, and revel in her surprising softness.

 

“Might I know...when I might be permitted to call again?” He tried. Humility did not sit well on him, and they both knew it. “A man may learn to moderate his passions,” he added. _I would like to be more than a blunt instrument,_  he wanted to say. _To you, or any other woman. I am in need of tutelage in being tame._

 

She considered this a moment, studying him with a practiced eye. _Is this a game to you,_ her eyes asked warily, _or do you ask in earnest?_ “I’m hosting a salon, in a week’s time -- a small evening at home, a few friends and neighbors. I’ll send my carriage ‘round for you.” She sounded disinterested, merely placating him.

 

He nodded, giving a little bow, and was ready to go when she sighed and stood, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Standing face to face for the first time since last night, Simcoe was struck by the color of her eyes, a kind of vixenish green. She turned her face slightly, and he was at a loss for a moment until he realized she was presenting him her cheek. _Is this a test?_ He dipped his head to kiss her, lips light, breath shallow, once on her cheek, and then, after a pause, a second time in the soft, wispy curls along her brow.

 

Wondering if he’d gone too far, he stepped back, watching her for a sign -- approval? disapproval? Her eyes were shut, her expression vague, savoring the moment like a connoisseur lingering over his port.

 

Finally she spoke. “The poetry?”

 

“Burnt.”  He’d shoveled it into the grate this morning.

 

A smile -- small but there. “Better.” She pronounced, opening her eyes again. “Next week,” she repeated. “Don’t forget.”

 

That afternoon, after he had thoroughly scandalized the office by rolling up at the princely hour of nine o’clock, perfectly dressed and alighting from the carriage of one of the most notorious women in the city, he was accompanying his officer on yet another tour of the warehouses when the ladies of the Philadelphia riding club appeared again, smart as ever.

 

Simcoe took a special pleasure in stepping away from the group and striding up to the ladies, doffing his hat and making a bow.

 

“Captain Simcoe! What a pleasure to see you.” How proud she looked atop her bay mare, green jacket still immaculate and trim, the Amazon once more. It was breathtaking. “Ladies, allow me the pleasure of introducing Captain Simcoe -- late of Long Island. He is to be my new fencing master,” she revealed with pleasure, smiling beneficently at him. _She's decided, then,_ he realised, a smile of his own forming on his lips. _If she'd meant no, she would have scorned me._  A loud noise -- a box being dropped? -- made her horse take a nervous half-step forward, and he stepped closer, one hand catching her reins, ready to control the animal if it tried to bolt, the other firm against her saddle.

 

“Fencing, Lady Montrose? What interesting pursuits you have,” one of the other ladies said.

 

“Every lady should know how to defend herself, I think,” Lavinia said, catching Simcoe’s eye with a look that betokened amusement at their private joke. “Do you not agree, Captain?”

 

“Entirely, my lady,” Simcoe said easily, lightening his grip when he could see the horse was no longer in danger of getting loose. “Not all men are tame.” His hand, slipping down, made the barest of motions along the outside of her thigh, hidden only by her skirt and the lightest of petticoats. She noticed it -- he knew she did --and her smile curled with pleasure.

 

“Will you join us next week?” she asked, as if she had not asked the same question of him that morning in her boudoir. “You shall have to bring us all the latest news from New York.”

 

“It would be entirely my pleasure,” he replied, stepping away and bowing his good-byes.

 

“Lord, Lavinia, where did you find _him_?” One of the other ladies asked, _sotto voce_ , as he walked away.  “He looks like something out of a _novel_.”

 

“You...you didn’t say you knew Lavinia Montrose!” his officer was sputtering.

 

“You didn’t ask,” Simcoe replied, feeling mighty pleased with himself. Yes, perhaps Philadelphia would not be so bad after all.

 

 


End file.
